Media Bias Debate

On Monday evening's NBC Nightly News, host Brian Williams used a perhaps revealing verb to describe a belief held by former Soviet foreign minister and Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze, who died on Monday at 86. It would be good to look back and learn how Shevardnadze came to say what he said a decade ago before getting to how Williams framed it. As reported in Doug Martin's obituary at…

"Imagine after Katrina that reporters are getting ready to go to New Orleans, and the Bush administration says to reporters, now one thing: no recording devices, no questions, no interacting with staff or children, no photos, and no interviews, but other than that you can cover Katrina," MRC president Brent Bozell noted on this afternoon's Your World with Neil Cavuto. He observed that the media…

The press loves billionaire Warren Buffett, who can be relied to support President Barack Obama even in implausible circumstances — such as the current economy, where the "recovery" following the 2008-2009 traditionally defined recession has been worse than any since World War II, and barely better than what was seen during the awful post-Depression 1930s. Thus far, the press has managed to…

This goes back to a week ago Saturday morning, but given the content and that it occurred on a weekend, it really needs more visibility. On June 28, Juan Williams put in an appearance on a Fox News "Cashin' In" show panel which discussed the IRS scandal. Host Eric Bolling discussed poll results revealing that three-quarters of Americans believe that the IRS deliberately destroyed emails, and…

Andrea Mitchell devoted three minutes of the July 7 edition of Andrea Mitchell Reports to assist Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards in promoting the abortion-clinic chain’s latest publicity gimmick. What’s more, instead of inviting a conservative pundit on to rebut the guest or perhaps attempting an unbiased, tough-but-fair interview in the first place, Mitchell tag-teamed with…

Would right-wingers like a larger presence in mainstream news and entertainment media, or would they rather grumble about the MSM’s liberal bias while patronizing conservative media outlets? To American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman, it’s clear that the second is correct. Waldman’s peg for his Wednesday post was a National Review piece by editor and publisher Adam Bellow on the need for a…

Fox News contributor and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer made a very interesting and logical correlation Friday. The press has predictably failed to make the connection or even to relay Krauthammer's point, simply because it leads to the default assumption that conservatives were right on an important economic issue. To be clear, the point Krauthammer and National Review Online's…

In the latest White House press release disguised as analysis at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, AP stenographer Paul Wiseman sang the praises of this nation's "humming" job market and its "steadily rising" growth as the economy is "finally showing the vigor that Americans have long awaited." Wow. Of course, the White House — er, Wiseman — never mentioned the following (…

A prominent exhibit explaining why the nation's trust in its media establishment has dropped to precipitous lows would likely include Tom Cohen's Thursday afternoon column at CNN expressing befuddlement over President Barack Obama's unpopularity. After all, Cohen's headline crows that under Obama we have "more jobs" and "less war" (!), so there's a "disconnect" which must be explained. To…

Attempting to take historical revisionism to an absurd level, New York Times "Arts Beat" reporter Jennifer Schuessler claims that the removal of a long assumed to be present period at a critical point in the Declaration of Independence — smack dab after the identification of its three God-given rights — may radically change the document's meaning from its common understanding. Naturally, the…

The identity of President Obama's nominee to head the scandal-plagued, bloated mess known as the Department of Veterans Affairs was known on Sunday. Very few news outlets (the Fox news item just linked is an exception) noted that Obama's pick was particularly odd because McDonald's run as CEO at Procter & Gamble was not considered a success. He was essentially forced into retirement after…

A Quinnipiac University poll published on July 2 found that 33 percent of Americans view President Obama as America’s worst modern president compared to 28 percent who picked George W. Bush. Following the release of the poll, Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent, Political Director and host of “The Daily Rundown” dismissed the findings and argued “these great and worst lists,…

Media Research Center's Rich Noyes appeared on the Monday, June 30 edition of Fox Business Network's Varney & Co. to discuss the MRC's latest findings about the network news avoiding developments in the IRS scandal. "ABC, CBS, and NBC their evening newscasts did not touch the Lerner email story for seven days," Noted informed guest host Charles Payne. What's more, "it took a congressional…

On June 18, Catholic broadcaster Eternal Word Television Network suffered a serious religious freedom setback when "A federal judge in Alabama ... dismissed a Catholic broadcaster's legal claim that requiring employers to include contraception in their health care coverage is unconstitutional." The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, felt that story was important enough to merit…